2011 Glencoe Community Guide - Pioneer Press Communities Online

Intersection of Park Avenue and Vernon Avenue Circa 1920s. - Glencoe Historical Society
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his t o r y of Gl e n c o e
gle n c o e ch a m b e r of co m m e r c e | 2011 co m m u n i t y gu i d e
Each May, Glencoe’s second graders travel about the business
district, looking at pictures of intersections at various times in history
and ask what has changed over time. What was “then” and what is
“now?” In fact, Glencoe may have changed over the past years, but
physically, it looks similar to the town that began to grow in the late
19th century.
Glencoe started as an agricultural hamlet—home to farms, a lumber
yard and stagecoach stop—but over time evolved into a suburban
community with a local business district. Homes that were built at
the time Glencoe was incorporated, l869, still stand tall today next to
those built in the 1920s, 1950s, and the 21st century. Glencoe retains
much of its small-town feel as the Village evolves, while holding tightly
to its heritage.
Native American Potawatomies were here before white settlement;
they used the densely forested land for hunting. In 1835, Anson H.
Taylor, storekeeper and future stage coach inn owner, moved with
his family from Chicago to begin new lives. He named the area after
himself, Taylorsport. It was an agricultural hamlet with a lake pier and
farms plowed by English and German immigrants who joined the
Taylors before the Civil War.
Glencoe evolved, change spurred on by the 1855 arrival of the
railroad. The station was located across from the house of Walter S.
Gurnee, president of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad (later the
Chicago and North Western
and now Metra and the Union Pacific). Gurnee was a real estate
speculator, as well as former mayor of Chicago. He located the depot
near his holdings after Anson Taylor rejected the idea of combining
railroad and stage coach stops. The town grew up around the train. It
is likely Gurnee also gave Glencoe its name, after his Scottish roots,
or perhaps he named the village after his father-in-law, Matthew Coe,
from whom he bought the stock farm and home. (Coe’s Glen).
In the late 1860s, a pediatrician idealist, Dr. Alexander Hammond,
came to town and bought Gurnee’s home. Dr. Hammond’s dream
was simple: he enlisted nine other men to join him in creating a
utopia. Each man agreed to
build a house for himself and to sell another to someone else. The
Glencoe Company agreed to keep a park at the lakefront in perpetuity
and to fund a church and a school. Unfortunately, the real estate
declines of the 1870s put most of the Glencoe Co., including Dr.
Hammond, out of business. But the village they founded, platted
and incorporated in 1869 was on its way.
With the railroad, Glencoe developed into a commuter community
for some and a summer vacation community for others. Although
there were many German farmers in Glencoe—the Diettrichs and
the Beinlichs —through the Second World War, the population
grew and changed, with the village becoming more suburban
than rural and new residents moving in from all over—African
Americans from the south and Canada, and white ethnic groups
coming from Chicago.
Glencoe’s downtown—or uptown as many of the older
residents call it—also changed. The village never has had a huge
commercial center, but it has always bustled. Originally, there
were blacksmith shops and feed stores. From 1902 to 1993, the
business district’s anchor was Henry C. Wienecke’s hardware
store. Other stores joined Wienecke’s (Win-eh-kees). There were
many grocery stores, barber shops and soda fountains, which over
the years, changed to groups of cleaners, clothing boutiques and
banks. After the family sold the hardware store, the Wienecke’s
property changed into residential and assorted retail spaces.
The population increased steadily through 1960, requiring
growth in schools from a single all-village school, today’s Central,
to four schools: Central, South and North built in the 1920s and
West, added in the 1950s. The community built out, with the last
subdivision, Strawberry Hill on the west side of town, finished in the
1950s. But then the population declined, bringing the 1976 closure
of West School and then in 1979, North School, later reconfigured
into the Community Center, now the Takiff Center. In the early
1990s, the population pendulum swung upward once more,
necessitating the 1992 re-opening of West.
Glencoe’s downtown lost and gained new neighbors as the years
went by. The Glencoe Movie Theater, on Vernon Avenue, was
razed in 1979, as was its northern neighbor, the Masonic Temple.
Christophe’s, a five-and-dime store disappeared when the Harris
Bank built its drive-through lane in the late 1970s, and restaurants
have come and gone. The Writers’ Theatre developed in the
space behind Books on Vernon and today presents drama at the
Women’s Library Club.
Indeed, Glencoe has changed, but held tight to its heritage.
Courtesy: Glencoe Historical Society
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